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I love horror fantasy fusions. But yeah, I absolutely believe you can be super attached to your characters and empathize with them yet still be more than happy to slaughter the fuck out of them. Doesn’t mean you’re less attached than someone who wouldn’t hurt their characters, I think it just means that you made a difficult decision, or like the more emotionally driven writers like me, let the story sweep you away and did what it demanded.

I often get attached to my characters, and while sometimes might have trouble letting go I still can because it can make the story better. Granted my current story is an Urban Fantasy with stripes of horror, so there’s a decent amount of gruesome death. And I often have it on page to be read.

Still be nice about it I get so little feedback that I’m not sure if my writing’s really any good or not. What @CL Mustafic did ages ago, helped, in a review, she offered to read over and provide criticisms to my stories (until she got too busy to do it) – so that’s another way you can give help if you like the story enough, but the grammar/flow/etc is getting in the way.

And it’s a weekend (for me). If I make enough progress, I’m tempted to post ch 14 a week early… depends.

DemonGoddess has a FAQ for that here: http://www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/topic/64151-how-to-fix-the-black-diamond-issue/ As she works her way through the subdomains for the archive clean-up project, she’s doing her best to fix that issue permanently, but the fix in the FAQ does help.

Editing/betaing is a topic I could discuss for hours. I won’t, though, because I don’t want to hijack the thread. I’m happy you enjoy it. Like ridiculously happy. My favourite people to beta for are the ones who are eager to learn whether or not they take my suggestions. Giving feedback is an art form too, and helpful critiques are not always appropriate. I very rarely give critiques, even sugar coated ones, to people who didn’t ask for it. Like when I review random chapters on AFF, I usually bite my tongue and only put the positive things. Sometimes the best way you can help a struggling writer getting little-to-no attention is to give their ego a boost, and theeeen you can worry about helping them with their issues (if you want to take that on). Let them feel some love and positivity. Let them feel like writing is worth the deafening silences and that someone out there is listening. That will help their passion grow, and when people are passionate about something, they evolve. Some very well-meaning critical feedback can be crushing to someone whose confidence is already shaken and can do more damage than good. I’ve had arguments about this with other betas, but I’m the Queen Beta, so listen to me, not them. But if you’re reviewing someone like @Desiderius Price who has explicitly stated they welcome critical feedback, the gloves very nicely come off. I think it’s still important to not be a dick about it.

I think “biopsy” needs some tags here: [BDSM] [Torture] [Violence] [Gore] [MCD/MiCD] & [Nec] (where that second to the last one depends on the ego of the doctor) Without the internet, I likely wouldn’t be an author as I wouldn’t have discovered fanfic nor would I desired to continue a particular story, and so forth, leading to today where I’ve got (some) confidence because I’ve posted and gotten feedback. Some criticism is definitely *good*, obviously, don’t bludgeon the writer to death with it. If you find a story you otherwise like (premise, setting, etc) and something gets in the way, the author would certainly like to know why. Perhaps it’s fixable (spelling, grammar, some details/construct) or not (ie, premise), but the author can sort that out. Editing, I’ve found, is double edged, you can do a bit to improve, or overdo it and ruin the underlying story; even a rotten editor can certainly get you to butcher an otherwise good story if you’re not careful. I’ve started to relax a bit on the amount of proofreading/editing I’ll do for posting on AFF, figuring that I’d do it more seriously if I publish – the Repair Guy was an experiment there, doing one pass and trying to keep myself to one pass of reading it over, and overall, I’m happy with how the story turned out. Now Jefferey, which I started to “revise/edit” as a means to get myself back into it so I could continue the story, ended up adding 11 new episodes to the story (so far) that weren’t there in the original draft.

With the introduction of the internet, the availability of feedback for new writers and the promise of anonymity creates a lot more opportunities for someone that might not otherwise develop the skill. However, in itself it becomes a vacuum with the blind leading the blind. Betas isn’t a bad idea. I worry about giving critical feedback (for one, what do I know), and worry about how some people will take it. Criticism is very helpful to me, even if it presses out the ego juices. The editing process is so important, too – indispensable. I enjoy the editing process more than the writing sometimes, because after the story dump is finished, I have some boundaries to work within (I think that is what attracts me to writing fanfiction, too). I can improve, expand, and tighten a story to have a better impact rather than free-fall into it. I hope the results of your biopsy are ok, for whatever reason you needed one!